E ntertainment journalists and columnists don't have the best reputation. Ye gods, on an average day we rank somewhere between Roman Polanski and Paris Hilton on the table of respect. Today, however, our stock must have plummeted even further. This is largely due to a column by one Jan Moir of the UK's Daily Mail... a person who manages in a few column inches to demonstrate all that is wrong in the profession and yet still maintain that SHE's the victim... it would be an impressive passive-aggressive art if it wasn't also so tedious.


Okay, firstly, some context. This is the article I'm talking about. Read it all if you can. (Here).   Okay, done?

I don't know what to say. Moir's diatribe is merely a series of bigotted holes knitted together by barely-contained bile. Her whole tack of 'There's nothing wrong with being gay, but why do these dead people have to be so... gay about it?' stinks of the worst kind of ignorant prejudice and gossip rather than anything resembling basic research and facts. Her inference (which couldn't have been more single-entendre'd if she'd typed nudge-nudge, wink-wink at the end of every sentence) is that three gay men must have been doing something sleazy because, well... they're GAY dammit and just echoes the moral righteous indignation of a newpaper that loves to roll around in the subjects it despises (only so YOU don't have to!). The day before Mrs Gately buries her son, Moir dances on the grave, spits a little and bitch-slaps the mother for being naive.

Now, I don't know what did or did not happen on the night of Gately's death. Unless there was criminal activity, I don't want to know or need to. Frankly, it's not YOUR business either.  What Moir does though is use every sentence that apprently bemoans the 'gay' angle, to do nothing less than hammer the 'gay' relevance into her paragraphs, whether it fits or not. The coroner, clearly not on a par with Moir's CSI level of expertise has given me enough information to presume this was a tragedy rather than a crime, merely a sad death not a tabloid's wet-homophobic dream.  And apparently, again flying in the face of Moir's logic, people under 30 CAN actually die of natural causes. Sometimes, even  in their pyjamas. (Fuck you, Quincy!)

After Twitter reacted like only Twitter can (look, even Stephen Fry tweeted on it - maybe it's not so inane and pointless after all!) and advertisers began pulling out with a speed normally reserved for Glen Beck,  Moir poured petrol on the water fire, and 'clarified' that  she actually thinks gay people are kind of sooooper (presumably when not dying) and that her comments have been deliberately twisted and misquoted  to fit others' agendas. This must be true as she'd clearly know such an act when she sees it.

So... what next? Tomorrow will Moir asks why black people, some of whom are her friends so there's nothing personal,  so love them watermelons? A career at FOX clearly beckons...